In recent years, along with the progress of electronics, the access time to images has been markedly shortened and rapid processing has been increasingly demanded of the silver halide photographic elements.
In order to enable the photographic element to be suitable for quick processing, conventionally, a technique is known in which development rate, fixing rate, water washing rate, and drying rate are enhanced by reducing the amount of gelatin employed as a binder to protect and disperse silver halide grains. However, when the employed amount of gelatin is reduced, highly sensitive silver halide grains are further decreased in their resistance to external pressure. Thus, problems occur during automatic processing, that density unevenness composed of many fine spots, termed a roller mark, is caused due to pressure applied by surface irregularities of conveyance rollers in the development tank of the automatic processor. Thus, as a technique to solve problems such as the above, for example, Japanese Patent Publication Open to Public Inspection No. 9-218488 discloses composite grains in the form of core/shell in which colloidal silica is employed as a core and an organic polymer is employed as a shell, and this technique has been proven to minimize the roller marks. However, it has been found that improvement in photographic performance is not fully realized because a decrease in the binder amount is not fully effected due to sharing of organic polymers having a binder-like character.
Recently, on the other hand, global environmental contamination has been taken up as a global issue; inside and outside our country, wastes have been of much concern, and responsibility for enterprises has been argued. In such circumstances, a decrease in photographic processing solution waste has become an urgent problem.
As a means to solve the problem mentioned above, conventionally, techniques have been disclosed, for example in Japanese Patent Publication Open to Public Inspection No. 4-291252, in which silver halide grains are shaped into a tabular form or silver halide grains undergo selenium sensitization. Furthermore, silver halide grains comprised of silver chloride are advantageously employed for low-replenished processing because accumulation effect to a developer can be improved due to the fact that silver chloride is readily developed and the effect of chlorine ions to the developer is insignificant compared to bromine ions and iodine ions.
However, the replenishment rate is not sufficiently decreased employing these techniques. When the replenishment rate is further decreased, the above-mentioned pressure resistance is further degraded. Furthermore, even though combined with the above-mentioned fine composite grain technique, it has been found that in an ultrarapid and low-replenished processing in which the developer replenishment rate is 35 to 98 ml per m.sup.2 of photographic element and the total processing time is not more than 30 seconds, it is difficult to achieve high sensitivity, minimum fog, pressure resistance, and layer strength as demanded.